Just fancy the flurry on a June Sabbath in Killingly, in
1785, when Joseph Gay, clad in velvet coat, lace-frilled shirt, and white
broadcloth knee-breeches, with his fair bride of a few days, gorgeous in a
peach-colored silk gown and a bonnet trimmed "with sixteen yards of white
ribbon," rose, in the middle of the sermon, from their front seat in the
gallery and stood for several minutes, slowly turning around in order to
show from every point of view their bridal finery to the eagerly gazing
congregation of friends and neighbors. Such was the really delightful and
thoughtful custom, in those fashion-plateless days, among persons of
wealth in that and other churches; it was, in fact, part of the wedding
celebration. Even in midwinter, in the icy church, the blushing bride would
throw aside her broadcloth cape or camblet roquelo and stand up clad in a
sprigged India muslin gown with only a thin lace tucker over her neck, warm
with pride in her pretty gown, her white bonnet with ostrich feathers and
embroidered veil, and in her new husband.
The services in the meeting-house on the Sabbath and on Lecture days
were sometimes painfully varied, though scarcely interrupted, by a very
distressing and harrowing custom of public abasement and self-abnegation,
which prevailed for many years in the nervously religious colonies. It was
not an enforced punishment, but a voluntary one.
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